Commissioned in 1969, the original GE Frame 32H gas turbine operated at the Lake Cormorant compression station for more than 200,000 hours. However, the next scheduled outage brought an unknown repair scope due to end of life issues for turbine discs, buckets, and other hot gas path components.
Texas Gas selected GE to upgrade the technology in a project valued at over $4m, designed to leverage technologies from GE’s fleet of Frame 5, 6 and 7 gas turbines.
GE incorporated new design features into a newly manufactured replacement Frame 32J machine for the Lake Cormorant station, increasing efficiency by 2%. The new unit is currently in full-load operation and Texas Gas has ordered a second unit, scheduled for October 2010 delivery.
Bill Nunn, manager of compression support at Texas Gas, said: “Knowing that several of the hot gas path components were reaching the end of their design life, we began evaluating our options to restore the existing unit to its original performance. GE was able to offer a new gas turbine tube that not only incorporated their advanced technology, but also proved to be an economically viable project.”
Equipment for the replacement unit was supplied from GE’s Florence, Italy, manufacturing plant and included a new gas turbine tube comprised of a compressor discharge case, turbine case, low-pressure and high-pressure shafts with buckets, compressor rotor and stator blades, and additional parts.
Texas Gas operates an interstate natural gas pipeline that moves gas from Gulf of Mexico supply areas to Midwestern and Eastern US gas markets.
